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Slovakia poll: PM Fico to win general election

According to an early exit poll, incumbent leftist Prime Minister Robert Fico won Slovakia's Saturday general election, but lost his comfortable parliamentary majority on the back of a strident anti-refugee platform.

An exit poll late on Saturday by the private Markiza TV station showed his Smer-Social Democrats (Smer-SD) party taking 27.3 percent of the vote followed by the liberal Freedom and Solidarity SaS with 13.3 percent and conservative OLANO-NOVA which took 11.2 percent.

Final results are expected on Sunday.

At least seven other parties entered parliament according to the poll, including the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS) with eight percent, touted by analysts as a possible Fico coalition partner.

It's "a big mishmash and a huge number of political parties in parliament", Fico told reporters as he arrived at his Smer-SD party headquarters minutes ahead of the end of voting.

The extreme right nationalist LS-Nase Slovensko (Our Slovakia) led by Marian Kotleba also made it into the 150-seat parliament with 6.8 percent, according to the Markiza poll.

Two other parties, Most-Hid (Bridge) representing the ethnic Hungarian minority took 7.30 percent support, while the liberal Siet (The Net) party made its debut in parliament with 6.7 percent.